Kilpatrick Says He Can’t Afford Revised Restitution

BY JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Kwame Kilpatrick in an emergency motion released today, says he cannot afford to pay his revised court-ordered restitution.

After a contentious six-day hearing, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge David Groner ordered Kilpatrick on Jan. 20 to make a lump sum payment of $79,000 within 30 days and another payment of $240,000 within 90 days.

The former Detroit mayor “has as of yet not been able to come up with the amount … and is unlikely to do so within the time allowed by the court,” Farmington Hills attorney Daniel Hajji said in the emergency motion.

Hajji said the new payments would cause Kilpatrick and his family “manifest hardship … as well as impede in his ability to earn income.”

The revised payments should be canceled, Hajji said, because Wayne County prosecutors failed to fully prove the changes were needed.

When Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to perjury-related charges stemming form the police whistle-blower case, he was ordered to pay $1-million restitution. But Kilpatrick, who moved to Texas as a sales representative for Covisint, a division of Detroit-based Compuware, said he had only $6 a month after his expenses.

Prosecutors argued that Kilpatrick and his family had hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and loans that enabled him to maintain a lavish lifestyle in a posh suburb near Dallas.

The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said it does not have to respond to the motion “unless specifically ordered by the court.”

Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the judge saw the evidence and heard the testimony.

“We thought the ruling was just, fair and should be followed,” she said.

The $79,011 ordered due within 30 days included $19,500 Kilpatrick received in gifts, $36,142 in moving expenses and rent his family got from a nonprofit fund, and $23,369 received from a tax refund. In all, the judge ordered Kilpatrick to repay a total of $319,011.